Lateness

Remember when you were a kid in Rochdale, and you were late for school?

You had to bring in a note from your parents, stating why you were tardy.

Yes, you had a doctor's appointment.

Yes, you overslept.

Yes, you weren't feeling well.

As long as mom signed that note, everything was OK.

Fast forward to the present time, and the deadline for sending payment for the Reunion was September 15.

That deadline has passed, yet people are actually deciding now to come to the Reunion.

The committee needs an accurate tally this week. We cannot accept checks past this week, and actually,  checks really should have been in already.

We need to tell the caterer how many people we are having at this event, and we can't have people sending in checks next week for this thing.

Here is the deal: if you have finally decided to go to the Reunion, and you have not yet sent in a check, I would do it RIGHT NOW, ON MONDAY.

I will be checking the box this week, but there will come a point where we will not be able to accept any late checks, as THE P.O. BOX IS BEING CLOSED THIS WEEK.

So please, SEND IN YOUR CHECKS TODAY, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 16.

No, Mom can't help you this time ...

Friday the 13th

I don't know if you are superstitious, but today is Friday, September 13.

Yes, Friday the 13th.

This is supposed to be a day where if you are superstitious, you really watch yourself.

As a kid, you did not step on any lines on the pavement.

You did not walk under any ladders.

You kept your fingers crossed as much as you could.

Maybe you carried a rabbit's foot or a four-leaf clover on you on that day.

I don't have any real Rochdale anecdotes about Friday the 13th, because I am not a superstitious person at all.

But what I do know is that Friday the 13th marks just two days until you can get your checks to us to come to the Reunion.

Please get those checks to us as quickly as possible. The Committee meets again next week, and we really have to have our final headcount in place so we can alert the caterer as to how many people we are going to have.

No, you won't have bad luck the rest of your life if you aren't there, but you will miss out on the bash of the season, that is for sure, and probably the last large reunion of the Rochdale "kids" and others that will be held.

So please, send out your payments now!

Believe me, that will be the luckiest thing you do right now, because this is an event you do not want to miss!

Clothing

I am not much of a clothes horse, but there was a style of dress that we saw in Rochdale when we were kids.

The 1960s itself was a transitional period in dress. Just look at old TV shows and movies, and you will see us move from more formal attire to much more casual clothing as the decade played itself out.

So the years 1963-1975 were the real transitional wardrobe years in Rochdale, reflecting the times we lived in.

Kids dressed in dungarees and polo shirts early on, but later, that morphed into more free-flowing attire, certainly led by the emergence of such items as bell bottoms.

Bell bottoms certainly mirrored the time, and for many of us kids, they were so much preferred than the usual tighter pants, because you could get them on and off so easily, especially if you had your shoes on.

And the bigger the better. I think the big ones were known as "stove pipes," but I can't clearly remember.

And directly for the girls ...

Remember hot pants?

I guess they were kind of risque for the time, but to me, they were basically short shorts, shorter than the normal short.

But the girls loved them, and I guess us guys enjoyed them too, if you know what I mean.

Again, I don't know anything about clothes, but the styles were a'changing in Rochdale at that time, as they were in society, and Rochdale mirrored what was happening outside the gates, so to speak.

As for the Reunion, wear what you feel comfortable wearing, but take note of one very important thing:  many of the people you will be reconnecting with are probably people you haven't seen in decades. How do you want to appear to them after all that time?

No one will be turned away if they are wearing shorts and a T-shirt, but honestly, I would go with business casual, sort of dress-down attire that you would wear at work, so no suits, no ties, no gowns, nothing like that ... unless you are comfortable wearing those items.

Quite frankly, it is up to you to wear what you want at the Reunion, but wear something.

No nudes will be allowed in!

Skelly, Skully, Whatever You Call It

Probably the top game to play in the playgrounds in Rochdale during its early days was skelly ...

Or was it skully?

I never found out the true name of the game, but I knew how to play it, and I played it so much that my middle finger cuticle on my right hand remains misshapen from it to this day.

You take a good bottlecap, fill it with crayons, leave it on the heater in your room, have the crayons melt, let it cool, take it outside, rub it so the bottom is flat, and you are ready to go!

The idea of the game is to move around the board to various numbered boxes until you get to the end.

In the meantime, you can knock your opponent's pieces out or move them to various spots on the board with a flick of your finger.

During the early days of Rochdale, this game, seemingly a variation of marbles, was all the rage.

I believe I read that it was actually created in the streets of Philadelphia, but the game kind of moved over here too, in different variations than the original.

My pockets were full of skully caps, and so many of the crayons my mother bought for us were melted down and used with these caps.

As we got older, the game started to wane in popularity, but back in 1964 to about 1969, just about every park in Rochdale had a skully board drawn into it using chalk.

The one in the building 9/12 playground was right at the entrance to the park from the back of building 9. You just walked into the park from that exit, turned left, and that is where it was.

Kids today would probably scoff at this game, but heck, it was better, and more socially involving, than playing video games all day.

Skully, skelly, whatever you want to call it, was just one of the now old-school park games we used to play in Rochdale, along with hopscotch, SPUD, and punchball.

We all have memories of those games, and I will bet those memories will come up pretty regularly among the conversations at the Reunion.

Time is moving fast, and you have just four days to get your payment in, so do it today!

And bring some skully caps; maybe an impromptu board can be drawn up, and we can get into that flick of the finger once again, for old times' sake.

Horseshoes, Nails and the Like ...

Rochdale Village was constructed on the site of the old Jamaica Race Track, and various buildings had to be razed for the residential project to be built.

But as I remember it, in the early days of development, one could always find remnants of the old race track here and there.

I distinctly remember finding old horseshoes and lots of nails out and about during those days.

One day, my friend Ira and I decided that we were going to build a tree house, and we took what tools we had, some wood, and marched over to the deep end of Rochdale, somewhere near where I.S. 72 eventually was built.

In our seven year old minds, we figured that a tree house was a necessity in the wilds of Rochdale, I guess, and where better to put it than quite a ways away from where we lived in Building 9?

Anyway, we marched over there and started to put up this thing.

One thing led to another, and whatever we constructed fell down, and for me personally, that was the end of my building career, as I learned at an early age that I was not very handy.

But I do remember one other thing about this experience.

We were both wearing sneakers, and Ira stepped on a nail that had to be a couple of inches long that was buried in the ground. It was rusted, and I think that is when our little project stopped.

It punctured his sneaker, went into his heel, I believe, and he had to go right to the doctor to see if he was OK or if a tetanus shot was needed.

Funny how I remember this, but I do, and I don't think I ever ventured over to that part of the development again until I.S. 72 was built.

Flash forward to today, and we are in something of a horse race.

There are only five days left to send in your check for the Reunion.

Don't make this into a photo finish--make it into a Win, or at least a Place and Show.

You don't want to finish out of the money, so to speak, so send in your payment now!

I will bet that it is a decision you will not regret!

Music

During our time in Rochdale in the mid 1960s through at least the mid 1970s, music permeated our neighborhood.

You could hear everything from pop, rock, soul, jazz and classical music from one corner of the development to the other, and like today's kids with their iPods, we had our own music devices.

Who can forget our home Hi-Fi systems, which pretty much consisted of a turntable and speakers? Sure, pretty primitive by today's standards, but back then, this type of system came in all shapes and sizes, and was even portable.

My family had one, and we moved everything from the foyer, where the system was normally kept, to our rooms when we listened to our records, 45s and LPs on a spindle that would play one on top of the other.

And for even more portable music, we all had transistor radios of all shapes and sizes.

That plays into one of my favorite memories of Rochdale, one that I will never forget.

Otis Redding was on the verge of becoming a huge star, crossing over from black radio to AM Top 40 with numerous songs like "Try a Little Tenderness.

He was about ready to become huge when he died in a plane crash in December 1967.

His record label rushed out "Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay" to honor his death, and I remember that it shot up to the top of the charts, eventually reaching No. 1.

And in mid-December, I did my usual bicycle riding from one mall to the other to buy comic books.

Incredibly, from one corner of Rochdale to the other, kids had their transistor radios out, and seemingly all you heard, from one end of the community to the other, was "Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay."

It was an incredible memory, one that showed the true power of the music we listened to.

Whether it was from A--the Animals--to Z--the Zombies--music was everywhere in the old neighborhood, and the music that made our lives during those years will be heard at the Reunion.

If you have any suggestions, please note them. They will all be presented to the committee, who will, in turn, probably make up a master list of tunes to the DJ.

Hopefully, you will hear your favorites.

I have mine, and I hope that the DJ plays them too.

Become An Official Attendee Now!

Remember those kid-oriented clubs we used to belong to, the ones that asked us for a nominal amount and we would be a member forever?

A lot of those "clubs' were linked to comic books and TV shows that we watched.

Fast forward to 2013, and you are also being asked to join an exclusive club, one that you already belong to.

Yes, you are being asked to join the list of official attendees to the Rochdale Village Reconnection Reunion, being held on Oct 5.

And although the "dues" aren't as cheap as those clubs on long ago charged, the benefits are just as enormous.

You can meet up with people you haven't seen in ages.

You can have a nice meal.

You can have somewhere to go on a Saturday night.

You can't beat that, can you?

All kidding aside, time is running out for you to get your checks in.

The deadline is September 15, just a few days away.

You already belong to the club; now is the time to get those "dues" in!